


Wild Things

by tiny_white_hats



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Gen, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-22
Updated: 2013-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-03 05:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/694849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiny_white_hats/pseuds/tiny_white_hats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ruby is a wolf, just as much as she is a woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShadedTopaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadedTopaz/gifts).



> First of three OUaT ficlets, with a central theme of being outsiders. Not necessarily the fluffiest of stories, but they're all featuring strong women being awesome, which fits the assignment well. Ruby first, because she's my favourite character in OUaT.
> 
> I really, sincerely hope you enjoy your gift basket! Happy Purim!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Ruby, or anything else mentioned in this unofficial fanwork.

Ruby was a wolf. She was a human too, but when it came to her very nature, there was just as much wolf as woman. The lines had gotten blurry after a while, smudged like lines drawn in sidewalk chalk. Ruby didn't know where the woman ended or the wolf began anymore. Maybe neither one of them ended at all, maybe they were the same creature.

Sometimes, on nights when the moon was dead in the sky, empty black space tucked away behind thick, grey clouds like blankets, Ruby went out to the woods to run. She would leap over dead green logs and slip between boulders and she would throw back her head to howl at the moon. And on nights when the moon was bloated and full, she would curl around herself in an empty jail cell and imagine dirt under her paws and the moon on her back. 

Ruby was different, she was _other_. When she didn’t wear her red cloak, Ruby was a tangled mess in nasty greyscale, some amalgamation of human and beast, but not truly, not fully either. Ruby wasn’t just like all the other nice boys and girls, not now that the magic was back. The other boys and girls didn't have teeth and claws like she did. In the Enchanted Forest she had been a killer and an outcast and a freak, but, for 28 identical years in Storybrook, she had been just like everyone else. Now, the wolf lived in her skin again, and nobody would look her in the eyes anymore. This must be what being a monster felt like, Ruby thinks, when even Archie looks over her shoulder when speaking to her.

In the woods, it didn’t matter anymore. She was a hunter, an animal, and she belonged between the trees just a much as every faun and fern and stone. That was where wild things belonged. And some part of Ruby, a part that felt a little larger each night the full moon rose, was wild. 

She liked to think that she and the wolf were two different things, like her body was a host for two different spirits or souls, but that wasn't true at all. There wasn't a tame, human girl and a wild, savage wolf, there was just Ruby. Ruby (woman and wolf) could remember the taste of Peter's blood on her tongue and she could smell the scent of wild rabbits from within Granny's diner. The wolf wasn't something else, wasn't some demon that came over her once a month, it was part of who she was, just like her slow temper and her love of dancing.

Ruby was a wolf just like she was a woman, just like she was a werewolf. She was not one or the other, not truly either of the two things, because she was both. She was a woman in the sun and a wolf in the moon but she was Ruby, in both shapes, and that was all. Ruby was a werewolf the way that Mother Superior was a fairy and Leroy was a dwarf, not in the way that Emma was a hero and Cora was a villain. Monsters killed and savaged and destroyed, because monsters made the choice to be monsters. Ruby hadn’t, she had chosen to lock herself in cages and to confront the real monsters. Ruby wasn’t a monster, she was just a werewolf.

Maybe Ruby was the only werewolf in Storybrook, or even in the entire world. Maybe, one night a month, Ruby had claws like knives and teeth that were designed to tear flesh. Maybe Ruby had blood on her hands, from killing a man she’d tried to save. But, maybe, just maybe, none of that mattered. 

**Author's Note:**

> Of the three fandoms you requested, OUaT is the only one I'm well versed in. I've seen Les Mis (2012), but I'm decidedly neutral towards it, and I would crash and burn if I tried to write in that fandom. I've never seen any of Merlin past the pilot, so my familiarity with it is roughly 0. So, three OUaT ficlets, and three Les Mis icons.
> 
> I really hope you enjoy your gifts!


End file.
